Tobias Jones - The Salati Case

I picked up the camera from the passenger seat and moved the lens anticlockwise to bring them into focus. It was an old couple. Soon others were coming and I zoomed in on them, letting the shutter rattle as I took repeated snaps of their slow walk to the burial site.

I recognised Umberto Salati and Lucentini, the old woman I had spoken to yesterday. Salati was with a woman and two young boys. Some other younger children were there. But in all there were only thirty or so mourners, mostly elderly.

Once they were inside the cemetery, I checked all the photos on the screen. They were all good, clear shots. Another index to add to the list of mourners from La Gazzetta .

I stared out through the windscreen. Funerals always make me think of the accident, of when my parents cart-wheeled their car on the A1. It was three days before my eighth birthday. Theirs was the first funeral I had ever been to. I can’t remember them any more, just their faces from the photographs. But I remember the funeral and what happened afterwards. I went off the rails like their car went off the road. I lost not just my parents but also the idea that life was worth living. I was passed from relative to foster parent to priest. Every few months I was checked in and chucked out. None of them could handle me. I didn’t want them to though plenty tried, quite literally. I spent the next half of my childhood in institutions. When you live like that you learn pretty fast who’s coming to hurt you or help you. You work out pretty quickly who’s telling the truth and who’s bluffing. And you realise that if you’re in any doubt it pays to fear the worst.

I shut my eyes and tried not to think about it.

When they came out half an hour later, they were walking differently. Umberto and his ex-wife, the woman I assumed was his ex, were holding each other’s arms. Lucentini seemed stiffer. The children had stopped running and were holding on to their parents. It must have been the effect of that first fistful of earth, that thud of mud on wood. They had buried Silvia Salati.

I started the car and drove back to the city. I pulled up in Viale Mentana and looked at the familiar logo of the masthead written in slanting, metre-high letters. It was illuminated for the passing traffic: LA GAZZETTA.

There was a girl at the front desk reading something hidden on her knees.

‘Where’s the necrologi department?’ I asked.

‘Fourth,’ said the girl, not looking up.

I took the lift up. On the fourth floor it opened on to another front desk.

‘Necrologi?’

‘Yes.’ The girl said it quietly as if she was offering condolences. I figured she must be doing that all day.

‘My name’s Castagnetti, I’m an investigator.’ It came out formally, and the girl looked up at me. I flashed my badge. ‘Who is the editor of the pages of the dead? It’s in connection with a murder.’

The girl stared at me like I had blood on my face. She didn’t say anything but walked briskly around the open-ended wall towards the office behind. I heard phones ringing and the rattle of computer keys. Dictations to the departed, I thought. I noticed I was already talking about the disappearance as a murder. Partly because it made people sit up and listen, but mainly because that was what I felt sure it was.

A man came round and introduced himself. I didn’t catch his name, but clocked his face: he looked in his thirties but his head was shaved completely, the sort of skinhead that baldies go for. There was something about him that made him look slick. Maybe it was just his shiny tie and his polished shoes, but I figured he liked a fast buck and fast women.

‘Somewhere quiet we can go to talk?’ I asked.

‘The canteen is about as quiet as it gets.’

‘Show me.’

We went down a long, narrow corridor into a small room. We sat down by a window overlooking the main road.

‘How can I help?’ He looked eager and curious at once.

‘Say I place a notice of mourning with you, how am I charged?’

‘Per word.’

‘And so if I know how many lines there are in a mourning notice, you know how much I pay, right?’

‘Exactly. A word costs two euros fifteen, plus VAT. A photo is forty-two fifty extra, and a cross will cost you fourteen.’

‘All plus VAT?’

‘Everything plus VAT.’

‘Even the cross?’

He nodded.

I pulled out the photocopy of the mourning notice from Riccardo. Or rather, from the person pretending to be Riccardo. I threw it across to him and he pulled out his mobile phone and thumbed in a few numbers.

‘Then I reckon you paid thirty-six euros, twelve cents.’

‘Exactly?’

‘I’ll have to check.’

‘Would there be any record that I paid that amount?’

The man stared at me. It looked as if he were readying his defence against any accusation of evasion. ‘Of course there is. In our accounts we enter every transaction.’

‘I’m checking up on a confidence trickster.’

The man nodded. ‘I heard it was a murder.’

‘Might be both.’

The man shrugged.

‘This necrologio was published in Monday’s edition. I’m looking for any payment for thirty-six euros and twelve cents made on Sunday. Is there any chance you could find a payment of that quantity in the transactions from the weekend?’

The man raised both his palms to me. ‘There are confidentiality issues here. We don’t give out those sort of details.’

I hear it every day. Everyone always says that, until I can offer them something more interesting than confidentiality.

‘I didn’t catch your name,’ I said.

‘Marco. Marco Mazzuli.’

‘All right, Marco. This is what I do for a living. I look into your favourite stuff: black chronicles as you call them. You would be surprised the stuff I see. I’ve never really had a contact here at La Gazzetta …’

‘And?’ He was negotiating already.

‘I’m just saying that if you help me I could help you. All I need is to see that transaction. They would never know my source. As your readers would never know yours, if you’re with me.’ I looked at him. Mazzuli was already imagining the scoops he could get from me, his man on the street.

‘What was your name?’ Mazzuli asked in a whisper.

I passed him a card.

The man was already nodding. He could see an easy bargain. He stood up. ‘Stay here. This will take a while. We run hundreds every day and thirty-six euros and twelve cents isn’t that uncommon.’

‘So I’ve seen.’

The man got up to leave and I looked around the canteen. It was clean and cold. An elderly woman was shouting something out back. From the window where I was sitting I could see the traffic outside. It was almost lunchtime already and the cars were static and noisy as they crawled home. The canteen began to fill up with one or two customers.

The man came back with a thick roll of narrow paper. ‘This is the cashier roll for the Saturday and Sunday.’

He gave one end of the paper ribbon to me but kept hold of the centre of the roll with his thumb and forefinger. It unwound as he took a step back.

I looked at all the numbers. Every few centimetres there were transactions: the amount, method of payment, the date and the time. I scanned about a metre of the paper and saw only one transaction of thirty-six euros and twelve cents.

‘How many people worked the register that day?’

‘Just Suzi.’

‘The girl who’s on there now?’

‘Right.’

‘And is there any way of knowing how these were paid?’

‘It says here,’ the man whispered. ‘Debit card.’ He passed me another slip of paper. ‘This is our Visa record.’

I looked at it. The slip reproduced the date, time and amount of the transaction. The card details were hidden by asterisks bar the last six numbers. There were two numbers, then a space, then another four. I wrote down all the digits.